Then I created a Delicious account. I decided not to import all of my current browser bookmarks. Instead I chose a few often-used browser bookmarks and added them separately to my delicious account. I tagged each one with one or more keywords for easy finding later. Again this process was pretty simple, but I started to get worried about all of the accounts I have created in these last few "Things." Am I going to remember all of my accounts and what usernames and passwords I chose? Some of these web tools are already tied into to other accounts (such as google/blogger.com) and you can use previously created account information. I guess that is a good thing, but one more thing to remember!! I found out (after I created my delicious account) that the site is a part of Yahoo now (from the "Several Habits of Wildly Successful Delicious Users" article). I already have a yahoo account from MANY years ago, used it for my Flickr account, and wish Delicious would have told me that when I registered like Flickr did!!!! Then I wouldn't have created ANOTHER account!
After all of this account creating, blogging, photo & bookmark sharing, etc. I have started to feel web vulnerable. So far, I have tried to be careful about the personal information, pictures, bookmarks, and ideas I share publicly, but it has gotten difficult to "cover my tracks" everywhere I go. Sometimes I don't even understand what's public and what's private anymore. In fact, I'm totally confused by the "Inbox" on delicious. I got worried when I read in Brendon Connelly's "Several Habits of Wildly Successful Delicious Users" that "you can check out other users' inboxes by just replacing their
USERNAME in this url:http://del.icio.us/inbox/USERNAME. By exploring through a few layers of who is watching who, you'll start to come up with your own list of people to stalk--just add them to your inbox!" Maybe I don't understand this, but other people can read my inbox?? I checked the FAQ's in delicious and one of the questions is: What is my Inbox (formerly known as "links for you"), and how do I use it? The ANSWER: "This is where you can receive bookmarks from other Delicious users. Your Inbox is not visible to other users." Huh? Which is true? Whatever the answer is, I am going to try to be sure that anything I post anywhere is going to be something that I don't care about being public!Ok, so after all of the paranoia, back to delicious and social bookmarking. I feel that it will be useful for me personally at work since I work in several different locations during the week. I have actually noticed recently that keeping all of my bookmarks in my browser is becoming a problem since they are only set to one computer. Delicious will help me retrieve all of my important bookmarks from ANY computer. YAY! I can also see how this web tool could be useful for librarians who work at a reference desk, point, etc. away from their office computers. And, if I understand it correctly, I guess a library could set up a delicious acccount of frequently-used web resources and share it with patrons. Or the patrons would have access to the library account through tags or bookmarks sent to an Inbox? I think I will need to do some further investigation into this tool. I suddenly feel uncomfortable . . .
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